HomeFusion Data Caps

[#1]

cjrhea wrote:

I hope Verizon rethinks their caps at some point. Otherwise, I hope state and federal folks get involved.  We, as a country, have the technology to provide Internet services to almost everyone at reasonable costs.

First of all satellite has similar caps and I have yet to see the government get involved with them yet. Secondly at the end of the day HomeFusion is still mobile broadband and at this point they can not offer unlimited data or even the 250 GB caps cable and DSL provide. Maybe instead of asking for Verizon to raise the caps you should ask your local government why they aren't forcing cable or DSL to extend broadband to your area.

Also only 1 of the 2 major satellite providers has a "no limit" period. That would be Wildblue and it's between 12 am - 5 am. And if you think that is such a great thing you could always get Wildblue's service. Though I do agree Verizon should offer it.

Unless satellite starts offering much higher caps don't expect HomeFusion's cap to go up very much anytime soon. Though I do think that within 8-10 years they will be over 100 GBs.

[cjrhea]

Yea, I thought I saw a posting where someone said Hughes also followed WB and did the "no limit" period. Couldn't find it on their web site when I just looked.  I seriously considered WB. Almost pulled the trigger, but the biggest disadvantage is that I need/use services that are latency sensitive (SSH or VPN connections for work).  The sat providers are fine, if you're surfing the web or sending email.

I don't see cable or DSL extending as it makes no financial sense for them. We need technology where it's wireless for the "last mile". That makes more sense in less dense areas, IMHO.  I was one of the ClearWave customers that Verizon inherited when it purchased Alltel, Decent technology, but horrid back-end congestion.

I don't expect Verizon to do much any time soon. They have a virtual monopoly on the area (from tower density/coverage). 

To put things in perspective for those who question "rural"....  I live about 12 miles from the center of a city of 100,000 (third largest city in Minnesota). Cable stops about a mile +/- from my road. My phone company has such ancient equipment, I have copper all the way to the phone office (~7 miles).

[wwaldo7956]

I had HughesNet for 9 years (Direcway before HughesNet).. They had an open time period between 2am and 7am EST. This was to allow downloading whatever but mostly for updates and such. Worked great for windows updates. I think Verizon Wireless could swing that. their usage at those hours is minimal. Also, Hughesnet had a Token that they gave you 1 free every month (didn't carry over if you did not use it). VW could also use something like that for say 1-5GB if you go over your package. This would be available once a month.

These are nice things they should have just to show they do care about the customers.

As far as Caps, I understand they are needed because of the 5% idiots out there that download non-stop making the 95% of us pay.. They could be just a little better on Cap size. I said they should have 20/35/50 for the three prices. These would allow at least limited streaming of say Netflix occassionally or online conferencing which I do once a week.

Anywas, all of that is not a problem for me.. my HF hasn't worked for 13 days..I've been on the phone with VW ay least 20 times and so far nothing. They were supposed to overnight a new router last wednesday and i'm still waiting on that. A technician is finally supposed to come this wednesday so we'll see....

[#4]

wwaldo7956 wrote:

I had HughesNet for 9 years (Direcway before HughesNet).. They had an open time period between 2am and 7am EST. This was to allow downloading whatever but mostly for updates and such. Worked great for windows updates. I think Verizon Wireless could swing that. their usage at those hours is minimal. Also, Hughesnet had a Token that they gave you 1 free every month (didn't carry over if you did not use it).

Hughesnet no longer has that package. Their new packages do not include the cap free period. You get between 10 - 20 "bonus" GB to use between 2 am and 8 am. They also no longer give you free tokens. You can still buy them, they are $8-$10 per GB depending on which package you have.

[#5]

cjrhea wrote:

Yea, I thought I saw a posting where someone said Hughes also followed WB and did the "no limit" period. Couldn't find it on their web site when I just looked.  I seriously considered WB. Almost pulled the trigger, but the biggest disadvantage is that I need/use services that are latency sensitive (SSH or VPN connections for work).  The sat providers are fine, if you're surfing the web or sending email.

I don't see cable or DSL extending as it makes no financial sense for them. We need technology where it's wireless for the "last mile". That makes more sense in less dense areas, IMHO.  I was one of the ClearWave customers that Verizon inherited when it purchased Alltel, Decent technology, but horrid back-end congestion.

I don't expect Verizon to do much any time soon. They have a virtual monopoly on the area (from tower density/coverage). 

To put things in perspective for those who question "rural"....  I live about 12 miles from the center of a city of 100,000 (third largest city in Minnesota). Cable stops about a mile +/- from my road. My phone company has such ancient equipment, I have copper all the way to the phone office (~7 miles).

Look I feel for you. I live in a rural area but I live in the county seat which has a population of about 4000( entire county has 16,000 ) surrounded by counties of similar population, but do we have cable and DSL. My friends that live just a couple miles outside city limits, no cable or DSL available.

The fact is at this time higher caps are not possible. Verizon uses the same 700 MHz frequencies for HomeFusion they use for LTE on smartphones. As long as Verizon has to cater to people that still have unlimited data I don't see caps going any time soon. When Verizon finally kills unlimited for good and uses the spectrum they bought from the cable companies, re-farms 1X and 3G frequencies and possibly gets some more spectrum from the TV spectrum auctions and also has the devices that can use those frequencies I'm sure the caps will be much higher. No way the FCC is going to let Verizon kill off POTS lines and not have viable alternative, and $60 for 10 GB and $120 for 30 GB with $10 per GB overage is not viable at this point.

[rancher]

I don't know what Verizon has planned.  I have Millenicom for my home internet.  20GB of 4G or 3G data for $70 per month, no contract or taxes, using Verizon's network.  I don't have any other land options, I'm in a 3G area about 8 miles from the tower.  I had satellite for 7 years, 3G blows that away in responsiveness, even their new generation service (which I have worked with).

I live in an agricultural area, population density less than 1 per square mile.  Living in the country may be a personal choice, but myself and everyone I know has lived here their entire lives.  And people like us grow food for this country, and yes, we need to be connected for many reasons.  So although it may be a choice, if "we" didn't live here, "you" would be paying a lot more for a lot of "your" food, to have it all shipped in from somewhere.  Sure I could move to town to get better internet, can I take my many acres of land with me?  Something reliable and -cheap- would be nice.  When a person's only choice at all for internet is a minimum of $60 per month (dialup was discontinued), and has very low caps for a family, it is annoying.  Government probably shouldn't step into this, but it took their intervention to get much of my state wired for electricity in the late '60s.  Town areas are covered over and over with many choices for internet, some of those choices could be siphoned off and the resources channeled to coming up with something better for "us".  At least it would be nice.  My neighbors were driving 30 miles one way to get enough data at a free hotspot (a 756Kbps shared hotspot) to complete school projects and online courses, they had the highest satellite package they could, and every day they did that, and far from the only ones.  In this day and age, it is crazy.

Hughesnet discontinued their free zone only because their competition was not offering it, not because they didn't have the capacity.  Then their competition offered it.  In my area, the newest generation of satellite service is closed to new subscribers, their new satellite does not cover half the country, and it did not cover here.  New and upgrading subscribers were only accepted on augmented beams on the old satellites for a short time here.

[evdotech]

I have read the entire post and a lot points are well made and taken. 

However because we live in the USA and not a socialist state, US Companies have a right to make money and unfortunately we are at the mercy of the corporations.

The Government is under no obligation to force companies to lower the price of your high speed internet access.  Do a Google search on how much money is spent to put up a cell tower?  It can be in the 6 figure range. How do you expect verizon or any other carrier to recoup that cost?

You can still get cheap internet access without going to libraries, its call a Land Line (internet), unlimited the last I heard.  

The Only way to cheaper rates is to have more competition. Clear, Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, Tmobile, US Cellular, Excede Satellite, Point 2 Point, Google fiber, and soon Dish Network

Cost can go both ways, Wants and Needs:  What do you need what do want? 

Can you watch the same tv show on your 19 inch tv as you can on your 50 inch tv. yes but then again consumers want more more more.

I myself fall into that trap of high internet,  I pay over $200 a month for internet?  Why so many internet connections you ask well I want to to be able to have Failover backup.  The last thing I want is hearing my kids scream that they got kicked off their PS3 Modern Warfare game.

Here is what I use and yes Comcast and AT&T do have caps:

Comcast, AT&T DSL, Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Pantech UML290, and TMobile HSPA+ Hotspot

Welcome to the age of Internet.

[cw21787]

You fail to see the point... Government regulated who could provide service in a given area in the past. Whichever company had the PRIVILEGE to provide service in that area had to provide EQUAL service to everyone for that privilege. Kind of a trade off for having a monopoly. Then came the not so brilliant idea of deregulation. Those rules were lifted, the large bell companies were broken up by force and the once great infrastructure has deteriorated. I still have the same service that was installed back in the 1960's. The old copper line cables that won't even support 24k from a 56k installed dial up modem. Verizon said back in 2002 that DSL was coming! Ten years later and nothing. I argued with them that they could install a repeater and catch everyone on our street as new customers, they refused. Their excuse now (2011) is they are going straight to FIOS in 2012! Well here we are at the end of 2012 and what have they done? Nothing. I dropped my land line this past summer and they practically begged me to keep it, offering to drop from $24 to $10 a month (core charge before taxes) just to keep the line going. I said, "no high speed internet, then 'no' to keeping the land line". So now Verizon maintains the right of way to a non customer. I am costing them money now. Sadly, I am sandwiched between Baltimore, MD and Washington DC. It's not like I'm in the middle of nowhere. They just don't want to spend the extra money it would cost to get several hundred more customers on their system when they could just stick to the cores of the cities for the easy money thanks to the government lifting their requirement of equal service to all in your service area. You will probably say that is an antiquated way of doing things. That's the way today's society thinks. So why doesn't the federal government drop the post office? The cost for delivering a letter to someone in the sticks has always been cost prohibitive, but everybody in the system shares the cost so everyone gets equal service. In the end, would I trade moving to the city just for High Speed Internet and give up living in the "Suburbs"? No way! That's my choice I have to live with.

[VigilantZ71]

A little different take on why I would like to evaluate the VzW Homefusion service.

We left the burbs 12 years ago in exchange for 30 acres of space in the sticks.  A conscious decision to forego many of the conveniences living in town provides… including decent internet service.

Once here we started with dial-up, then dual-channel ISDN, (128kbs whoa!), then finally proprietary wireless broadband was made available and we returned to the 20th century.  Life was good again until…. our wireless broadband provider was gobbled up, and then the next one was gobbled up, and again the next one was gobbled up…  (Dfwair.net -> Partnership Broadband -> Skybeam -> Rhino Communications).  With each ISP turnover our service suffered to the extent that I now have a provider that is charging me for 5mb down service I never see.  Over the last 6 months our service has suffered degradation to less than 1mb down on the average but my cost remains the same.  ($70/month) No amount of complaining or service calls changes it… clearly we are now on a tower that is way over subscribed and the provider has no intention of doing anything about it.  (Thanks Rhino).  There are (where) no other options (satellite is not an option in my mind due to latency).   Until now!

So here I sat reading your very interesting reviews, comments, and positions on the Verizon Home Fusion service.  I use a Verizon LTE 4260L mifi for work and it serves as a backup to my home internet when it goes down if it becomes so degraded to be unusable (too frequently unfortunately).  So I know I can catch an LTE cell from our home without the assistance of an antenna booster so connectivity to the Home Fusion service might be ideal for our needs were it not for the data caps.

I need to evaluate our actual monthly usage habits more closely and decide if it is viable or not.